Category: Rathfelder/Lentz/Nicholson

When I was looking at my sister’s DNA matches at Ancestry, I came across Nancy. She also matches me and we show common ancestors:

Ancestry want me to evaluate the tree. I suppose I can start with mary Ellen Nicholson. Here are the basics that Nancy has on Mary Ellen:

The thing I find interesting about Nancy is that she descends from Henry Nicholson who shows as the brother of my 2nd great-grandfather’s brother William. William was from a large family. Here are his siblings:

I also have my own DNA Matching Genealogy Tree:

This is part of the tree. I see I already have Michelle on the Henry Nicholson Branch. I suppose that is a good sign. I wrote a Blog including Michelle here.

My genealogy-only Tree doesn’t have Walter:

Doing the Genealogy to Try to Connect to Nancy

The best way to make the connection is not from the top down but from the present to the past. I’ll start a tree for Nancy:

Based on Arie’s Naturalization papers, Arie and Mary Ellen married in Sheffield, England and Mary Ellen was also born in Sheffield:

Based on this, I take this to be the Nicholson family in 1911:

All family members were born in Sheffield according to this Census.

More on Joseph Nicholson

I can get back to the 1901 Census before Mary Ellen was born:

Here is some more information from the 1901 Census:

Here is what I have for Joseph and Mary Ellen’s children:

Mary Ellen should be Boothroyd. I think that one of the record transcriptions was off. I have Joseph at least later associated with Brightside Bierlow:

In 1891, there are two Josephs associated with Ecclesall Bierlow.

Mary Ellen Boothroyd

Here is Mary Ellen in 1881:

Mary Ellen’s father was a Carter as was her later husband Joseph Nicholson. She also lived in Brightside Bierlow, so perhaps Joseph went to live near where she was from.

Back to Joseph Nicholson

FamilySearch has these two Josephs born in Sheffield:

Neither of these two have the father Walter as suggested by Ancestry. The one with the fathe Henry is promising as Joseph’s first son was named Henry. However, I’m ruling him out as he appears in the 1901 Census:

Here is a Joseph in the 1881 Census:

He appears to be the son of George and Mary Ann Nicholson and the grandson of Mitalda(?) Nicholson. I was looking in the Ecclesall Bierlow area, so that meets that criteria.

The 1891 Census Gives a Clue

Here Joseph is a Carter:

That is too much of a coincidence for me to overlook in an area that was known for the metal industry. Time to deviate from the Ancestry Common Ancestry Tree to see where this leads us:

Ancestry wants me to put in William Nicholson for the father of Joseph Nicholson. Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with this line. Perhaps the connection is on another line.

Trying the Top Down Method

This is the less preferrred method, but perhaps I can test out the Ancestry model this way. Here are two records for Henry Nicholson:

As these are both bachelors, they must be two different people. Interestingly, one is the son of Joseph and one is the son of Matthew. Matthew is my 3rd great-grandfather. I have Henry married to Ann Bainbridge:

I’m not sure where I got that so I’ll change her to Elizabeth Bradshaw. That could mean that the work I had done on a previous Blog on Michelle (mentioned above in the Blog) could be wrong.

Henry and Elizabeth in the Census

Here is a Henry and Elizabeth listed as visitors. They also have a son Walter. However, how did Henry and Elizabeth get three sons if they just married in 1850? Nothing seems to add up.

Back to Michelle

I mentioned Michelle near the top of this Blog. It appears now that I have drawn her connection incorrectly and too hastily. Now it is back to the drawing board or in this case, Nicholson Tree. Here is part of Michele’s tree:

Here is 4 year old Francis Emily in 1861:

10 years earlier, this couple had no children:

This is likely the Ann Nixon that I mentioned above.

This is where things get complicated again. I found an Ann Nixon who died in Worcester, MA:

Unfortunately, Henry’s death record is missing his parent’s information:

However, from the marriage record, we know that the Henry Nicholson who married Ann Nixon had as his father Joseph Nicholson. I will go with this for Henry’s birth:

This is the closest I could find in the 1841 Census:

Here, there are many possibilities:

• I may have the wrong family
• Joseph may have died, but then who is John
• Joseph may have been a John Joseph or Joseph John
• The Census taker may have gotten the name wrong

Assuming that Joseph and Sarah are the right names, here is a wedding transcription:

I assume that this is the same family in 1851 and that the husband is correctly named now:

Henry married a local girl as the Nixon family is on the same page. I also see that Joseph was born in Thorne.

The red marker is where Thorne is.

Will the Real Nicholson Relative Please Stand Up?

I have taken Michele off of my DNA relative chart. I believe she is related, but I haven’t figured out how or where right now. Both these lines end up in the Thorne area. From my early genealogical Nicholson guesswork, I did have a Joseph Nicholson in the mix:

Concerning the Walter in the Ancestry connection shown at the top of the Blog, I coudln’t find that he had a son named Joseph. This is what one Ancestry tree shows for Walter which appears to be accurate:

Summary and Conclusions

• Sometimes it is difficult to figure out how DNA matches match by genealogy
• When I took Michele’s genealogy back it ended with someone who died in Thorne
• When I took Nancy’s genealogy back, the Nicholson side also ended up in Thorne
• These DNA matches may hark back to an earlier Nicholson connection or they may connect with an associated line to the Nicholsons.
• At very least, I was able to correct a past mistake. I had William Nicholson’s brother Henry married to an Ann where he was apparently married to Elizabeth Bradshaw.
• I would like to give credit to the Sheffield Indexer Website where I was able to find important Nicholson baptismal and marriage records

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just noticed that I had a new Nicholson DNA match named Jessica:

Jessica shows to match on my mother’s side. Ancestry has already figured out that Jessica and I have a common ancestor:

Ancestry would like me to evaluate Jessica’s tree. The Docrill threw me off a bit, as I have a Maria Baxter Nicholson in my tree:

I also had that Maria died in 1866. I wonder where I found that. Perhaps I got the wrong person:

In 1861, I have that Maria Baxter Nicholson was living in Liverpool with her grandmother Ann Ellis:

This is why I like Census records so much. They tell quite a story. Here we have three generations of Nicholsons. From a previous Blog, I have that Ann Baxter is Ann Ellis who is the daughter of the elder Ann Roebuck Ellis listed in the Census:

I see this record online:

One reason this marriage to George Dockrill makes sense is that the Dockrill name is carried down in the US in Walter Nicholson’s Line:

This name must have been given in this family to rememer the Nicholson sister Maria who stayed in England. Assuming we have this right, Walter would have been a younger brother of Maria Baxter Nicholson. He named his son George Dockrell or Dockrill Nicholson.

More DNA Matches for Jessica

As it was not easy to find a marriage record between Maria Baxter Nicholson and George Nehemiah Dockrill, let’s look at some more DNA matches. Jessica matches my mother at 128 cM:

That is a substantial match. That means that I need to erase the early death record I had for Maria Nicholson. I’ll also add Jessica to my Nicholson DNA match Tree:

Jessica is in the first column.

Another DNA Match with Michelle

I can look at DNA matches that are shared between Jessica and my Mom. I see an interesting shared DNA match with Michelle and my Mom. They share 59 cM across three segments. Here is Michelle’s tree on her paternal side:

My attention is drawn to Michelle’s ancestor Francis Nicholson. When I search Ancestry for Francis, I find this record in someone’s tree:

My web page on the Nicholsons has a Henry here:

There is also a Matthew Henry on my web page, but this one makes more sense as Henry is the older brother of William who is my 2nd great grandfather. The tree above has this Henry born 1831 and I have him born 1822, so that is a bit of a discrepancy. The tree above has Henry married to Ann Bainbridge. I have Matthew Henry married to Mary Ann Bailey.

Here is Matthew Henry and Mary Ann Bailey in 1861:

Matthew Henry was a boss of some type and his sister-in-law was the housemaid. It looks like he had an adopted daughter Mary. That seems to rule out Matthew Henry as Michelle’s direct ancestor.

More on Henry Nicholson

Here is Henry and family in 1861:

Here we still have the age discrepancy. If Henry was 29 in 1861, then that is where the later birth of 1832 must come from. I believe that this is the same Henry in 1841:

Concerning Henry’s age:

The census takers were instructed to give the exact ages of children but to round the ages of those older than 15 down to a lower multiple of 5. For example, a 59-year-old person would be listed as 55.

That means that Henry would have actually been around 18 in 1841. Henry’s father Matthew had died the year before in 1840. In 1841 Henry was a cutler and in 1861, he was a table knife [hafter?].

Here I have added Michelle and Henry Nicholson into my DNA/Ancestry tree. That means that Michelle is Gladys’ (my mother’s) third cousin once removed. This is where the DNA gives some confidence to the relationship when some of the genealogical records are missing.

Summary and Conclusions

• I don’t get many new third cousin DNA matches, so Jessica was a good find
• Jessica descends from Maria Nicholson. I was not aware of this Nicholson Line before I found out about the DNA match with Jessica.
• Jessica and my mother have a shared match with Michelle. Michelle descends from Henry Nicholson. The DNA connection fills in some of the missing or not yet found yet genealogical records.

Lately I have been reaching out to Nicholson descendants at 23andMe who match me by DNA. The last one that I had identified was Dave and I wrote a Blog about my match with him here.

It turns out that this match is with Cynthia who is Dave’s sister. I didn’t realize that until I just checked. Cynthia’s common matches with me.

This shows that David is my third cousin and Cythia’s brother.

Here is how we match. I’ll need to add Cynthia into David’s box on the lower right. Cynthia didn’t know much beyond her Nicholson grandfather. I have more on the Nicholson family here. Here is Walter’s baptismal record from Kensington Presbyterian Church:

Walter is Cynthia’s Nicholson great-grandfather. Walter and his brother George Dockrill Nicholson were both baptized on April 4, 1886 when they were 10 or 11. Cynthia’s grandfather George Dockrill Nicholson was named for Walter’s brother.

My DNA Match with Cynthia

My DNA match with Cynthia is similar to the one I have with her brother David, but larger:

Here is my match with David:

I match David on the same Chromosomes but for less on each Chromosome.

I had added David to my Chromosome map, now I can add Cynthia. Here is Cynthia on Chromosome 8:

My match with Cynthia is represented by the third purple bar. Her match overlaps some with Linda. In order for these people to match me, each of our unique mixes of chromosome inheritances have to match up. David and Cynthia’s DNA matches with me do not overlap with each other

Other people that match me on this Chromosome are Linda, Carolyn, Beth and Robert.

Robert and Beth are the great-grandchildren of Sarah Nicholson, my great-grandmother Annie’s older sister. Linda and Carolyn descend from Nellie Nicholson and David and Cynthia descend from Walter Nicholson. David and
Cynthia also have a 1st cousin Robert, but he tested at AncestryDNA, so he doesn’t have detailed DNA comparison information unless he uploads his results to Gedmatch, MyHeritage or Famly Tree DNA (FTDNA).

My DNA Match with Cynthia on Chromosome 20

We have two copies of each of our chromosomes. Both Cynthia and I match on our maternal copy of our Chromosome 20. That is because that is our Nicholson side.

Chromosome 20 is one of the shorter chromosomes. Judith descends from my closer Lentz and Nicolson ancestors, so she is in a different color. Cynthia’s DNA match with me on this chromosome overlaps my match with David and Carolyn, meaning we all got the same DNA from William Nicholson or his wife Martha Ellis there.

Here is what my maternal chromosomes look like now:

Cynthia brought my maternally mapped DNA up a percentage to 38%. The purple represents DNA from my great-grandmother Annie Nicholson. I have eight great-grandparents, so that represents roughly 12.5% of all of my DNA or 25% of my maternal side DNA. Taking this one step further:

5.5% divided by 12.5% is 44%. That is the amount of DNA from William Nicholson and Martha Ellis that I have mapped now.

Visual Phasing

I have mapped out by visual phasing where I got my DNA from each of my grandparents on all my chromosome. Here is Chromosome 8:

I am the third person on the chart. All my maternal side (green) DNA came from my maternal grandmother who was a Lentz. However, this is my Nicholson side also as my grandmother’s mother was a Nicholson. That explains why I match Nicholsons well on this Chromosome. My sister Lori has the second most Lentz DNA on the bottom row.

Here is Chromosome 20 for me and my siblings:

Again, I have all green or Lentz. By looking at my siblings’ DNA, you can get a good idea how DNA is inherited differently by each sibling. For example, my sister Sharon would not match Cynthia on this Chromosome as she has a lot of Rathfelder DNA on Chromosome 20. But she may match on another chromosome where I con’t match Cynthia.

23andMe Family Tree

23andMe suggests that I add Cynthia to their tree:

I also added David on the lower left part of the tree.